


Bright as ever

by selfinduced



Series: we don't have forever [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 22:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12263478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selfinduced/pseuds/selfinduced
Summary: There's this thing that happens when you fall in love with someone. Every moment of intimacy is colored by their presence.





	Bright as ever

**Author's Note:**

> Prologue to Even in the Shadows (click next in series). Set during 2x19 Hail and Farewell.

There's this thing that happens when you fall in love with a person. Every moment of intimacy is colored by their presence.

 

You can be spending time with anyone else, and some part of you is thinking--can't be forced to stop thinking--what would it be like to be making fun of instructor Harrowfare and skipping woods tracking hour with _him_?

 

This happens even when you're alone. You stop to look at the sun rise over the New York skyline after a night out at the hunt with new trainees, and you think of how his hair would look in the brilliant orange light. Soon enough, you can't take a walk through Times Square glamoured as a mundane or shoot arrows off an abandoned rooftop alone or with anyone else anymore. It's no longer just you, or you and your sister or classmate, it's you, them, and _him._

 

Alec discovered this when he was ten and a half, the first time he threw knives with someone else while visiting Idris, when Jace was back home in New York. He spent the whole time thinking about Jace and what to tell Jace and what to bring back to Jace. _Jace, Jace, Jace._

 

He came to accept over the years that he could be slicing through shax demons with Izzy in the East Village and when she wanted to get bacon burgers afterwards, though he'd gladly have the bonding time with his baby sister, a part of him would _feel_  Jace there, imagining sharing the moment with him.

 

Until one day they marked each other with a rune and took an oath.

 

By then, he had been choosing anything that involved Jace even if it wasn't what he really wanted for so long, that it had become a part of Alec. The very fabric of who he was. The rune was merely an outward declaration to the world of what they'd known since the moment they met. Alexander Gideon Lightwood had received back the missing half of himself when he was ten and would never be incomplete again. Angry, full of denial and longing, infuriated beyond belief by turns--but never incomplete.

 

-

 

So the first time Alec saw someone wearing neon shorts with a dull white blazer and thought of the face Magnus would make if he saw, he'd been thrilled. He'd _known._ This was it, this was love in the language Alec had come to recognize: unbidden, unwarranted desire to share a detail you would never have even noticed if it wasn't for someone who could be your-- _something._

 

And then, even more excitingly, while teaching Clary to not fall every time a staff came at her feet he stretches a cut on his arm, and he thinks about Magnus touching the wound and making the pain go away. He's so delighted, in fact, that he goes to visit Magnus immediately--steers him to bed and leaves his bruises on display in case Magnus wants to heal them for him. Which he does.

 

And thus, Alec Lightwood's Jace-problem is solved.

 

Until he realizes that nothing short of Jace is enough to keep him going when Max is lying unconscious in the infirmary and nothing, not the Silent Brothers, not warlock magic, can fix him.

Alec can't see, can't feel his parents, or Isabelle, reaching for him with their hands--but down in the vaults, he can feel the unwavering presence of his parabatai, standing implacable and on guard. _We can't be broken._ It keeps him upright and moving forward even if he can't see where he's going.

 

In the war room, it's Jace's hand on his shoulder, Jace's voice, low and calm and gentle, his belief in Alec unfailing. And even worse--even Jace's impertinence at the Seelie Queen only serves to remind him that the time for polite pleasantries has passed, and to straighten his spine and hold his ground. Jace's presence radiates like the summer sun down at his side as they stride out, and Alec realizes even during his veiled apology, he never once looked at Magnus's hands, where his emotions hide. At his angriest, he's never been able to not look at Jace. Never not needed to have his support, his touch. Had never felt so destroyed as when he fought with Jace thinking he'd lost him. Even as he'd known that he could never truly lose him. Had already known that Jace would rather die than not be on his side.

 

Alec knows that this here and now is not about sides. That it's about Magnus needing to collect himself and focus on protecting his people. He may even agree that his own duty to the downworld may not be enough to earn their trust during their time of need. That their orders may yet come to oppose each other even if their principles never will. He can't guarantee his effort to protect everyone from outright war will succeed--as he told the Queen--it's been a work in progress. But, _we'll figure this out_ , Jace had said, and Alec had forged on, needing to believe.

 

The problem is that it's nothing to do with loyalty, or principles, the way he misses Jace whenever he's out of sight. Nothing so coherent or discrete as his fear and grief at losing a love he had actually been allowed to hold. No, it's a visceral tug on his ribcage when the angelic tether between the two of them gets pulled too tight, that erodes all logic and reason as if nothing else exists until they're reunited. 

 

The way nothing but Jace exists when Alec runs to find him staring down at the river from that bridge, a hand rubbing at marks left by chains that Sebastian had wrapped around his neck--and Alec stops, hand on his own side, over their rune. 

 

Alec can't breathe.

 

He watches Clary continue running up to Jace, his head swimming and vision blurring at the edges. He watches Isabelle spit their collective rage and loathing at Sebastian for daring to snake his way into their lives--and yet the raging despair inside Alec is wholly unrelated. All he can see is Jace. And all he can think is: _I could never be whole without you. It takes no effort to ignore his needs, to stop turning to him for comfort. But you, who's never touched me with hunger, you whose mouth will never be mine to have--you I can never not think of first._

 

He thinks he knows how it stands when Jace looks up at him. They're parabatai.

 

And though he lets Clary steer Jace off to the infirmary while he heads to the war room, he turns and heads right back. Jace needs him to heal. To feel grounded. It must be their rune that drives the words louder and louder through the hallways of his mind, drives his feet down the hallways of the institute towards the infirmary where he knows Jace will be.

 

"People die in war, Clary," Jace's voice stops him in his tracks as he watches through the glass doors. Jace's hands in Clary's hair, their faces close as he speaks into her mouth--

 

And Alec remembers sharply as if he's not a day older than seventeen after their ceremony: _the rune is just a declaration._

 

His feelings--his feelings have always been his own.

 


End file.
